Posts

Posted on

Teaching Online at EMU: Thoughts after (less than) a week

Despite the numerous things I resolved to do in my last post, it sure seems like most of my week has been dominated by the “Figure out this online teaching stuff” resolution (though I am happy to say that I was at the gym three long mornings this week, too). A few thoughts this morning about the process so far:

  • I think I might need to start keeping a private log/journal about some of what has been happening with me and my students’ work in this class. I say “private” because it just wouldn’t be cool to talk about individual students here.
  • The learning curve is flattening a little, but there is significant stuff I still need to figure out. Like the grade book feature, for example.
  • For the most part, I think eCollege is pretty good and pretty straight-forward software. But I guess I have two complaints about eCollege so far. First, as I mentioned before and as is typical of all CMS systems that I’ve seen, it doesn’t quite match my teaching. It’s a bit like putting my ball into their box: I can do it, but it doesn’t quite fit. Second, the eCollege interface is just plain ugly (IMO). Take a look at this demo class page: my class shell is uglier than this with ill-fitting fonts and a kind of neon green color scheme. Icky, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t much I can do about it.
  • The best thing about eCollege so far is the support. I email these people and I get an answer in a few hours. Simple as that. And I guess this is the real tension about using some sort of institutionally supported software (like eCollege) versus open source products (like moodle, as Jenny is using, or drupal or whatever): on the one hand, open source products give users tremendous flexibility. On the other hand, if you use open source software, you are on your own, basically.
  • Teaching online reminds me (unfortunately) about how much of my teaching is in my head and depends on a physical presence. I take notes and have some things written down or typed up before I go into a class, but most of what I teach is based on memory, and most of the exchange happens with me speaking to students and with students speaking back to me and to each other. Being “there,” present in a non-virtual form in a classroom, makes a difference. But beyond that complicated problem that I’m not going to go into now, there’s the more practical issue of getting stuff out of my head and into a format that my online students can interact with. That ain’t that easy.
  • eCollege (and most of these other CMS products, of course) have some interesting double-edged teaching tools that make me think about my face to face teaching, too. For example, eCollege allows me to track in minutes how much time students spend in different parts of the class. I can tell that some students have already spent hours online and I can tell in what parts of the class they have spent their time. And I can also tell that there are some students who have spent very little time with the class so far. Now, on the one hand, this kind of electronic surveillance is obviously kind of creepy. But on the other hand, we conduct this kind of “surveillance” in face to face classes, too. Teachers make judgements (accurate and inaccurate) about the extent to which students are participating in a class by the cues they give. Students who sit up straight, nod with the discussion, raise their hands, volunteer comments, etc., we judge to be engaged. Students who are reading the newspaper, slumped back, nodding off, silent, etc., we judge to be not engaged. Either way, we make these judgements with a more simple form of direct observation/surveillance.
  • I’m thinking about proposing a presentation/talk for Computers and Writing that is basically about all of this. I’m not sure I can articulate this that well yet, but I guess I didn’t think the learning curve and the work would be as hard for someone like me, who has been invested in teaching with technology for a long LONG time now. But I’m beginning to think that it might be even more difficult for me than it is for some of my colleagues who are more or less starting from scratch. We’ll see…. I haven’t seen the CFP for C&W 2006 yet…
Posted on

Parking in AA

Some time back, I complained about the parking vaildation situation with Borders in downtown Ann Arbor, since they now require you to actually buy something to get parking validation and they will only give you an hour worth of parking. My bitch/complaint (basically) was where else can I get parking? Well, thanks to a helpful comment from someone named Kyle, now I know. I was sorting through some old email messages and I thought I’d post the list that he posted earlier to my blog here this afternoon.

BUSINESSES THAT VALIDATE PARKING IN THE DOWNTOWN AREA
AS OF AUGUST 1, 2005

MAIN STREET AREA:
Business Name Location Service Provided
A Therapeutic Connection 206 S. Main, Ste 201 Professional Massage/Bodywork
Abracadabra Jewelry 205 E. Liberty St. Jewelry store
Absolute Title, Inc. 2450 W. Stadium Title Insurance Agent
Acme Mercantile 111 W. Liberty St. Retail
Aerostrategy 202 E. Washington St. Technology firm
Afterwords Books 219 S. Main St. Bookstore
Amadeus Restaurant 122 E. Washington St. Restaurant
American Title 425 S. Main St. Title Insurance
Ann Arbor Architects Collaborative 210 E. Huron St. Architectural firm
Ann Arbor Art Center 117 W. Liberty St. Gallery
Ann Arbor O’Hair 217 S. Fourth Ave. Hair Salon
Ann Arbor YMCA 350 S. Fifth Ave. Fitness Ctr/Child Care/Youth Program
Annekes Hair Station 221 S. Main St. Beauty Salon
Ark 316 S. Main St. Concert house
Aunt Agathas 213 S. Fourth Ave. Bookstore
Bank One 125 S. Main St. Private Client Banking Svcs
Bella Ciao 118 W. Liberty St. Restaurant
Bella Nina Day Spa & Salon 203 N. Fourth Ave. Day Spa
Bennett Optometry 117 S. Main St. Optical Exams/Sales
Blue Nile 221 E. Washington St. Restaurant
Busy Hands 306 S. Main St. Retail
Cappellos Salon 255 E. Liberty St. Hair Salon
Charles Schwab & Company 101 N. Main St., #130 Financial Services
Chris Petersen Jewelers 306 S. Main St. Jewelry
Clearweave Corporation 219 S. Main St., #203 Web Design
Colombia Asset Management 202 E. Washington St., #500 Financial Planning
Conor O’Neill’s 318 S. Main St. Restaurant
Dataspace 122 S. Main St. Data support systems
David Milling & Associates 208 W. Liberty St. Architects
Deruyver Properties 122 S. Main St., #350 Financial Planning
Diamond Bullet Design 315 W. Huron St., #140 Website Design
Dispute Resolution Center 110 N. Fourth Ave. Mediation
Downtown Home & Garden 210 S. Ashley St. Retail

MAIN STREET AREA:
Business Name Location Service Provided
Dream On Futon 303 S. Ashley St. Retail Futon Store
FCB Associates 206 S. Fifth Ave., #175 Real Estate/Management
Fiegel’s 320 S. Main St. Clothing/Consulting/Financial Advising
Fluent Inc. 220 E. Huron St., #470 Footwear Sales
Footprints 217 S. Main St. Footwear Sales
Frog Prince Studios 215-1/2 S. Main St. Photography
Gardner & Associates 201 S. Main St., #802 Legal Services
Generations for Children 337 S. Main St. Clothing & Toy Retail
Genetics Squared 210 S. 5th Ave., Ste A Biotech
Graphic Art Wholesalers 224 S. Main St. Picture Framing
Hoi Polloi Boutique, LLC 333 S. Main St. Women’s clothing and accessories
Inovo Technologies 202 E. Washington St. Technology Services
John Schultz Photography 206 S. Main St. Portrait Photography
Key Bank 100 S. Main St. Bank
Kim Moore, PLLC 116 E. Washington, #100 Law Firm
Kiwanis Club 201 S. First St. Rummage sales
Lord –Aeck & Sargent Architecture 213 S. Ashley St., #200 Architecutral design & planning
Matrix Gallery 111 S. Fourth Ave. Art Gallery
MAV Development 350 S. Main/305 Detroit St. Real Estate Property Management
Menlo Associates 212 N. Fourth Ave. Computer software & training
Metamorphosis 121 E. Liberty St. Salon and spa
Michael T. Murphy Photography 206 S. Main St., #201 Photography
Miki Japanese Restaurant 106 S. First St. Restaurant
Miller-Canfield 101 N. Main St. Law firm
Nancy Hart, Ph.D. 202 E. Washington St., #400 Psycho Therapy
Nicolette Boszik Interiors 122 S. Main St. Interior Design/Furnishings
Northwestern Mutual 124 E. Washington St. Insurance
Pamela’s Day Spa 249 E. Liberty St. Salon and spa
Patricia Melnick 202 E. Washington St., #200 Psychotherapy
Peaceable Kingdom 210 S. Main St. Gift Shop
Performance Network 120 E. Huron St. Theatre

MAIN STREET AREA:
Business Name Location Service Provided
Pointe Care Services 2020 S. Seventh St. Home Care Services
Renaissance 350 S. Main St. Retail
Republic Bank 122 S. Main St. Banking
Salon in the City 119 W. Washington St. Hair Salon
Salon Vertigo 328 S. Main St. Hair Salon
Salon XL 208 E. Washington St. Hair Salon
Schlanderer & Sons 208 S. Main St. Jewelers
Second Heaven Salon & Spa 328 S. Main St. Hair Salon
Selo/Shevel Gallery 301 S. Main St. Gallery
Seyfried Jewelers 304 S. Main St. Jewelry Sales
Smith Haughey & Rice 213 S. Ashley St. Law firm
Standard Federal Bank 201 S. Main St. Banking services
Strategic Wealth Management 214 S. Main St., #202 Financial
Susan Miller 202 E. Washington St. Psychological services
Tabor Hill Wine & Art Gallery 115 W. Liberty St. Retail Wine and Art
Urban Jewelers 215 S. Main St. Jewelry Sales
Van Goor Architects 116A W. Washington Architecture firm
Vie Fitness & Spa 209 S. Ashley St. Fitness & Spa
Voila Boutique 211 S. Main St. Retail
Westside Book Shop 113 W. Liberty St. Book Store
Wireless Toyz 200 E. Washington St. Retail-cell phones
Youth Empowerment Project 255 E. Liberty St., #273 Youth Services

BUSINESSES THAT VALIDATE PARKING IN THE DOWNTOWN AREA
AS OF AUGUST 1, 2005

STATE STREET/SOUTH UNIVERSITY AREA:
Business Name Location Service Provided
Arcadian Antiques 13 Nickels Arcade Retail-antiques
Barbara Nesbitt Emerick, DDS 625 E. Liberty St. Dental office
Borders Books & Music 612 E. Liberty St. Books/Music Sales
Center for the Education of Women 330 E. Liberty St., 2nd Flr. Counseling Services
Charles Beard, DDS 625 E. Liberty St. Dental office
Christian Science Reading Room 306 E. Liberty St. Book Store
Cottage Inn 512 E. William St. Restaurant
Crystal Clear Expressions 220-222 Nickels Arcade Intuitive Counseling
Dascola Barbers 304-1/2 S. State St. Barber Shop
Datmap 211 S. State St. Software Development
Dickinson Wright 301 E. Liberty St. Law Firm
Dollar Bill Copying 611 Church St. Printing
Dr. Barbara Lahood 400 Maynard St., #806 Psychological Services
English Language Arts 219 Nickels Arcade Language training/consulting
Great Lakes Team Apparel 309 S. State St. Sportswear-retail
Intervarsity 203 Nickels Arcade Counseling (non-profit)
IPS, Inc. Nickels Arcade Real Estate
John Leidy Shop 601 E. Liberty St. Gifts
Kate Beauchamp 320 Thompson St. Massage Therapist
King of Queens Restaurant 1235 S. University Restaurant
Lifetime Nutrition 328 Thompson, #203 Nutrition Consulting
Maison Edwards 11 Nickels Arcade Retail
Mark Kassof & Co. 527 E. Liberty St., #202 Marketing Research
Mark Wanless Electrolysis 527 E. Liberty St. Electrolysis
Mediation Training/Education Ctr 330 E. Liberty St., #3A Mediation & Consultation
Michigan Theater 603 E. Liberty St. Entertainment

STATE STREET/SOUTH UNIVERSITY AREA:
Business Name Location Service Provided
Middle Earth 1209 S. University Gift Store
New Age Salon 347 Maynard St. Hair Salon
Nexcess Net 304-1/2 S. State St. Software/Web Hosting
Professional Clinical Massage 328 Thompson St., #202 Massage Therapy
Red Hawk 316 S. State St. Restaurant
Sadako Japanese Restaurant 1321 S. University Restaurant
Shaman Drum 313 S. State St. Book Store
State Street Alterations 336 S. State St. Tailor Shop
Structural Design 275 E. Liberty St. Structural Engineering
Studio Sixteen 16 Nickels Arcade Jewelry Store
Totoro Japanese Restaurant 215 S. State St. Restaurant
University Flower Shop 7 Nickels Arcade Flower Shop
Van Boven 17 Nickels Arcade Retail Shoes
Village Corner 601 S. Forest Ave. Party Store
Wayne Collquitt, DDS 625 E. Liberty St. Dental office
Wazoo Records 330-1/2 S. State St. Retail-records
Zanzibar 216 S. State St. Restaurant

Posted on

99*

Scorecard

Steve B. and I played golf yesterday at Hickory Sticks, one of the usual places we play around here. Besides being a fun and challenging course, it also runs great coupon specials. We played Friday for $25 apiece for “all the golf you can play.” We actually started by playing the back 9 first, but the highlight was the round of 18 after this “warm up” 9. Steve B. had an 89 (only his second or third time under 90, I believe) and I had a 99, the first time I have ever broke 100 for 18 holes. As you can see in this picture, I started the 10th hole with a 9 (yipee for me), but then I rallied with three pars in a row and with no more screw-ups on any other hole. So, 47 for the back 9 plus 52 for the front 9 equals 99.

*Well, okay, a few qualifications of all this. Neither Steve B. nor I were exactly playing by official PGA rules at all times. We follow the “1 mulligan per 9 holes” rule (for non-golfers: this means you can take one “do-over” on a messed-up drive). We also follow the “that’s a gimmie” rule, wherein if the person putting is informed by the other player(s) that said putt is a “gimmie,” it doesn’t really matter if the putter makes the putt or not. On the last hole, I missed my putt after Steve B. called “gimmie,” but because gimmie was called, I stand by my 99. And truth be told, we played about as honest as we ever do. Or let me put it this way: we didn’t follow the sort of “non-rules” Jim K. and I used to observe when we were really bad a few years ago and we’d just keep taking “do-overs” until we were reasonably happy with the results. And we’d still end up with 120s.

Posted on

New Year's Resolutions

Today’s the first day of classes here at EMU. Since I don’t teach today, my original plan was to actually not be at school today, but it turns out that I have a Faculty Council meeting I need to attend. Oh well; summer is over.

I’ve thought of the beginning of the school year as the beginning of “the year” pretty much my whole life and certainly since I started teaching 17 years ago. Jeesh, 17 years ago. I was a graduate assistant back then. I was 22 years old in an MFA creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University, teaching first year composition about three or four months after I finished my BA. Ah, memories….

Anyway, since I’m at the beginning of the new year, I thought it might be good to make some new year’s resolutions (and I also thought that if I made them here, I might stick to them, too). So here they are, more or less in this order:

  • Get into shape. This might seem like the sort of thing I would mention on my unofficial blog, but I mention it here because I have an academic schedule this term that allows me few excuses for getting exercise and I really do want to make losing some weight and being a bit more healthy my top priority this semester.
  • Figure out this online teaching stuff. So far, so good, though I haven’t seen any activity on my online class yet. It’s pretty early though. And one of the things I am going to have to figure out for sure this year for my online teaching is podcasting and (possibly) screencasting, too. I just found out my CCCCs proposal was accepted; it’s called (right now) “Broadcast Composition : Using Podcasts to Build Community and Connections in Online Writing Classes,” and for the time-being, it’s going to be about using things like podcasting and other “lower-end” multimedia to supplement my online teaching. But that could change and evolve.
  • Read. I have mentioned this in the recent past on my blog, but basically, I am (more or less and/or one way or the other) finished with my textbook project, I am (more or less and/or one way or the other) pretty much off of the job market, and I have therefore reached a point in my career where I don’t have to produce scholarship in order to participate in that “academic game.” So, for a while at least, I think I’m going to become mainly a consumer of scholarship and read, both current scholarship and some of the things before.
  • Blog. And despite what Ivan Tribble said again, I stand by what I said back in July: While he did have some valid points, I think blogging can help someone on the job market and I think it helps those of us who are more “established” in academic careers too. To read more about Tribble II, I’d suggest reading Collin’s entry about this. By the way: it occurs to me that it is a little– I don’t know, strange/funny/ironic — that Tribble in this article seems to think that blogging under one’s own name can be okay and yet he’s sticking to his pseduonym here. Hmmm…..
Posted on

Plagiarism: The Lawsuit/Web Site, The Building, The Movie

Here’s kind of a catch-up post on some stuff I’ve come across lately:

  • Bill H-D sent me this link to an article in Inside Higher Ed, “New Tack Against Term Paper Providers.” Here’s a quote:

    Lawyers for a graduate student named Blue Macellari filed a lawsuit in federal court in Illinois alleging that three Web sites that sell term papers made a manuscript she had written available without her permission. She is charging the owner of the sites (as well as the sites’ Internet service provider) with copyright infringement, consumer fraud and invasion of privacy, among other things.

    But it gets a bit more complicated than that.

    According to Macellari’s complaint, a friend doing a casual Google search of Macellari’s name last January came across references to a paper she had written during a year abroad at the University of Cape Town in 1998, which Macellari had posted in 1999 on a personal Web site at Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her degree.

    But the friend found links to the paper not on her Mount Holyoke page but on two Web sites, DoingMyHomework.com and FreeforEssays.com, that said the paper was in their databases. Macellari says she later found several hundred words of her paper on another site, FreeforTermPapers.com.

    In other words, Macellari’s essay got lifted from her web site by some online papermill. Great, just great. Those papermill/spam bastards ruin it for everyone.

    Stopping students from publishing their writing on their web sites obviously isn’t much of a solution. But it is probably not a bad idea for me to recommend to students that they slap a creative commons agreement on their work. It isn’t going to stop people from taking their work, but it might give them ammo for a legal remedy.

  • In the “building” department and via Johndan’s blog comes this article “Brothers From Another Mother,” by Clay Risen and published in a web periodical called “The Morning News.” Here’s a quote from the first paragraph:

    Plagiarism is usually associated with college term papers and the occasional historical bestseller. Recently, though, the big story in architecture circles has been a growing list of supposedly “copycat� designs—in other words, architectural plagiarism. The hot architecture gossip blog, The Gutter, has made a regular feature—called the Gutterland Police Blotter—out of tagging similarities between, say, Rem Koolhaas’s elevated subway sheath at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a train station in Santiago, Chile. In a groundbreaking ruling earlier this month, a federal judge allowed a suit against Freedom Tower architect David Childs to go forward; the suit, by a former architecture student, accuses Childs of stealing the tower’s design from one the student had presented in a class project. And a recent New York Times article noted three other high-profile clashes between purported plagiarizers and their alleged sources.

    Johndan talks more about this on his site as well; for me, it raises some interesting questions about what counts as a “text,” what’s the difference between “copying” and “imitating” (I guess, as they say, doing it well is part of it), and do the rules of “words in a row” literacy apply to things like architecture.

  • Finally, Plagiarism the Movie. Well, okay; just kind of a cool flash intro to Washington State University’s plagiarism site, which also has some good info.
Posted on

Getting at the anti-Harry Potter crowd

This one really goes out for my wife:

91 Ways to Agitate Someone Who Doesn’t Like Harry Potter from a site called MuggleNet. Some of my favorites include:

  • Give them Harry Potter merchandise for their birthday and Christmas and demand that they keep it and treasure it forever.
  • Make them play Quidditch with you.
  • Use the titles You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to refer to random people.
  • If anyone tells you you’ll go to hell for reading Harry Potter, either: a) Jump and down and tell them that you can’t wait. b) Tell them you’ll meet them there. c) Sing “Weasley Is Our King” over and over again. Or d) Ask them to back up this claim with evidence, and laugh at them when they can’t.
Posted on

Another round of thoughts/articles/etc. on Katrina

I’ve spent most of this past Labor Day weekend around the house (most of the last week, actually), getting ready for the coming school year, but also following the Hurricane Katrina story via NPR, the web, CNN, network news, etc. Here’s kind of a summary of a few things I’ve come across lately:

  • Kevin “Political Animal” Drum gives a telling chronology of W. et al and FEMA. Actually, there are a ton of entries about all this on Drum’s blog, stories about how FEMA’s funding has gone down every year since it became part of the Department of Homeland Security, how the guy who is running FEMA used to be in charge of a group having to do with horses and had little experience in disasters, etc.
  • Here’s one entry that aired on that ultra-liberal Tim Russert. Let me quote from the site, which is really a transcript from last week’s show:

    MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn’t the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn’t they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?

    MR. BROUSSARD (that is, Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish): Sir, they were told like me, every single day, “The cavalry’s coming,” on a federal level, “The cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming.” I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry’s still not here yet, but I’ve begun to hear the hoofs, and we’re almost a week out.

    Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA–we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, “Come get the fuel right away.” When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. “FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.” Yesterday–yesterday–FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, “No one is getting near these lines.” Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America–American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.

    But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she’s done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn’t foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.

    Oh, and just to be clear: these sorts of national (beyond state borders) disasters is what FEMA is supposed to do.

  • Michael Moore has weighed in, too. Okay, okay, maybe he is a bit biased, but I think he’s right, too.
  • Cuba wants to help, but W. et al won’t take it. Here’s a pretty interesting quote from this piece:

    Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

    What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, “the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.”

    “Cuba’s leaders go on TV and take charge,” said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, “nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday – which seemed casual to the point of carelessness – suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.”

    “Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable” in Cuba, Valdes said. “Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin.”

  • W. et al nominated Roberts to be chief justice before Rehnquist’s body was even cold. Oh yeah, and what about Katrina? The “duck and cover” political strategy has been intiated. Here are two quotes of note from today’s New York Times article:

    It (meaning the White House) orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

    and…

    In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove’s tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.

    “The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials,” Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. “The federal government comes in and supports those officials.”

    That line of argument was echoed throughout the day, in harsher language, by Republicans reflecting the White House line.

  • New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, wrote an open letter to W. that I think kind of sums things up pretty well. I’m guessing that W. won’t be writing back.
  • Finally, I’ll say this, and I don’t offer it as a critique of the Bush administration per se because I’m not sure the Democrats are a whole lot better on this score. Like everyone else, I’ve been watching the news footage of rescues, of the Super Dome, of the NOLA convention center, of angry people in the streets, etc., and I cannot get by the fact that damn near all of these people are black. Why? Well, because most of these people are poor and they had no way out– see this Washington Post article about that— and because I think it’s pretty clear that our government (local, state, federal) doesn’t care a whole lot about poor black people (or poor people of other colors, either), I’m not so sure that it ever did, and I’m fairly convinced that it never will.

    I guess I have known for a long time that the United States– which is my country, and which is a country that I do love– is simply not “the best in the world,” despite the myths we tell ourselves. It just isn’t, and you can’t look at what’s happening on the Gulf Coast and still think that it is. And I guess this is what saddens me most about the whole thing.

Update/Addition:

Barbara “Babs” Bush said that things are working out “very well” for the poor. Afterall, they are getting out of that shithole of New Orleans to live in the great state of Texas– and even Houston! Jeesh….

Posted on

My Freshman Day (sorta…)

I participated in a freshman orientation session yesterday morning at EMU. Basically, the session I lead was about “life in the classroom,” and my job was to give them a sense about what classroom life was like in 50 minutes or less. Needless to say, I didn’t manage to accomplish that; I think they’ll actually have to start going to class before they can figure out for themselves what it means to be a “college student.”

I was able to work through an explanation of the handout they give to students, which has sections about things like the need to attend class, reading the syllabus, appropriate class conduct, not cheating, where to get tutoring help, etc. I guess it was useful for them. I mean, all of this stuff strikes me as common sense, but of course, what counts as “common sense” depends on the community that you are in. For example, a couple of students asked about this thing called a “syllabus” and about books (“How am I supposed to know what books to get for my classes?”). Questions that definitely mark these kids as “new.”

And I should point out that they were “kids.” We have a lot of “non-traditional” students at EMU, but as far as I could tell, all of these students were right out of high school and getting ready to live in the dorms, away from home for the first time ever. Most of these students were born around 1987, and this makes me feel quite old. Given that I was in my junior year in college back in ’87, it is no longer a stretch to say that I’m old enough to be the father of these kids. Yikes.

Anyway, while a lot of the questions these future students had about the classroom struck me as simplistic and obvious, I was also struck by how little I knew about the part of EMU that they inhabit on a day-to-day basis. Maybe I’m thinking about this now because I am reading the excellent book My Freshman Year by Rebekah “not her real name” Nathan, which is about an anthropology professor who enrolls as a freshman to research the life of college students the same way that studied other “distant and foreign” cultures. I haven’t come close to finishing reading it yet, but early on, Nathan talks about how different the university looks to her as a student than it did as a college professor. Among other things, she means this in a basic geographic sense: Nathan talks about how as a faculty member, she was able to park and thus enter the buildings where she worked from a particular vantage point. But as a student, especially living in the dorms, the university had a completely different geography, one that she found disorienting and confusing.

I experienced a little bit of that confusion myself on Sunday. While most of the orientation session I led was on “my turf” of the classroom, the students also asked about things having to do with meal plans, some dorm life issues, and registering for classes. There were two “student leaders” in my group, college juniors and seniors who were hired to usher around the new freshman, and I’m glad they were there. I had no clue about the questions these students were asking, and I found some of the answers surprising– the meal plan that students buy works everywhere except Wendy’s in the union, for example.

I could go on, and I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that what the university looks like is different based on one’s point of view. But I guess I was just struck by how very different this place seems to look to students than it looks to me. Something worth thinking about as I get ready to actually teach….

Posted on

An "Intelligent Design" theory I am willing to support

On my official blog, I try to steer clear of direct and overt politics and such. I don’t agree with the right’s argument that academia is too liberal to be fair to conservative students and I’ve voiced my opinions about all that here, but generally, I save my expressions of my politics and religious beliefs for my unofficial blog.

But I want to come out here all in favor of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or, as it has also been called, Pastafarianism.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an August 29 New York Times article, “But Is There Intelligent Spaghetti Out There?” As the article reports, the Kansas State Board of Education is giving preliminary approval for the teaching of alternatives to evolution like “Intelligent Design” in science classes. Bobby Henderson, “a 25-year-old with a physics degree from Oregon State University,” has some problems with this, which he shared in an “Open Letter to the Kansas School Board” in which he explains that if they are not willing to include the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s teachings about the origins of life in their “Intellifent Design” curriculum, he would take legal action. To quote from the New York Times piece:

In perfect deadpan he wrote that although he agreed that science students should “hear multiple viewpoints” of how the universe came to be, he was worried that they would be hearing only one theory of intelligent design. After all, he noted, there are many such theories, including his own fervent belief that “the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.” He demanded equal time in the classroom and threatened a lawsuit.

Soon he was flooded with e-mail messages. Ninety-five percent of those who wrote to him, he said on his Web site, were “in favor of teaching Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in schools.” Five percent suggested that he would be going to hell. Lawyers contacted him inquiring how serious he was about a lawsuit against the Kansas board. His answer: “Very.”

I think this is interesting for a whole variety of different reasons, but I will limit myself to two for the time-being:

  • The “Intelligent Design” movement is a fantastic example (maybe the best example ever) of how simply renaming something changes the values assigned to it by an audience. These folks were getting nowhere with the term “creationism,” largely because of the overt religious connotations. But “Intelligent Design:” well, who could be against that? It’s the same tactic we’ve seen with “The Death Tax” (which is a name that tested significantly better than what it really is, “The Estate Tax”), “Personal Savings Accounts” as they connect to Social Security, and so forth. But somehow, the language and approach of “Intelligent Design” seems unusually persuasive, perhaps beause the words “intelligent” and “design” so often have positive connotations.
  • The “Intelligent Design” movement is another example of what I see as a sort of re-emergence of religiosity into the public sphere. This is perhaps the most overt example, but I think that there are subtle ways in which the line that has traditionally separated “church” from “state” has become quite a bit more porous in recent years. Part of it is the Bush administration of course, but I also think a lot of it is a response to 9/11. Personally, I have nothing against religion per se, but a) I’m not a religious person and I don’t want to be compelled to be a religious person by the state, and b) we shouldn’t be teaching religious concepts of origin (or just about anything else, for that matter) as “science” or even as “scholarly,” and c) we shouldn’t be doing these things in publicly funded institutions.

Unless we do go down the Spaghetti Monster path. I’m all for that.